CHAPTER I.


_Introductory Remarks--Birth of Jane Austen--Her Family Connections--Their
Influence on her Writings_.

More than half a century has passed away since I, the youngest of the
mourners, {1} attended the funeral of my dear aunt Jane in Winchester
Cathedral; and now, in my old age, I am asked whether my memory will
serve to rescue from oblivion any events of her life or any traits of her
character to satisfy the enquiries of a generation of readers who have
been born since she died. Of events her life was singularly barren: few
changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth current of its course.
Even her fame may be said to have been posthumous: it did not attain to
any vigorous life till she had ceased to exist. Her talents did not
introduce her to the notice of other writers, or connect her with the
literary world, or in any degree pierce through the obscurity of her
domestic retirement. I have therefore scarcely any materials for a
detailed life of my aunt; but I have a distinct recollection of her
person and character; and perhaps many may take an interest in a
delineation, if any such can be drawn, of that prolific mind whence
sprung the Dashwoods and Bennets, the Bertrams and Woodhouses, the
Thorpes and Musgroves, who have been admitted as familiar guests to the
firesides of so many families, and are known there as individually and
intimately as if they were living neighbours. Many may care to know
whether the moral rectitude, the correct taste, and the warm affections
with which she invested her ideal characters, were really existing in the
native source whence those ideas flowed, and were actually exhibited by